The Rut of Not Writing

When a writer is stuck in a rut of not writing, the world becomes dull and blurry as though seen through the milky film of cataracts. Our senses go unused and unrefined, and we no longer strive to describe the sound of a fluttering page, or the smell of chlorine at the local swimming pool. We forget the taste of almonds, and oranges, and everything in between because we stop noticing.

So, when a magazine of prose and poetry greets me in the corridor downstairs, lounging on cracked mosaic tiles and stray leaves carried in on shoe soles, dare I say something in me blooms – a classic cliché, but it’s an entry point, an invitation to describe the way my mind opens up like a convertible roof.

A crisp leaf crunches beneath my flip flop as I bend down, sweeping up the magazine with a scatter of brochures and letters slipped beneath the door – and in that slit of sunlight pass shadows and snatches of dialogue. Tu fais quoi pendant les vaca—?

I retreat into the silence of this ancient building and climb its rickety stairs—duct-taped sporadically where its skin sheds—and upon reaching my room, the windows flourish open likes the arms of a conductor, music spills from my laptop, and my kettle springs to life. An ochre whirlpool of coffee is poured not by me but by one who reads, who writes, and it is she who licks her finger and opens the magazine (and maybe she might know how to describe the whisper, like a secret, of a page turned).

TO LINGER LESS THAN POLLEN

To unblossom, to unbud,

to unsprout, to ungerminate –

An undoing uncaptured by

the unravelling of a seam or spool,

an undoing unrelayed by action.

It is not a phoneline severed, not a carrier pigeon shot out the sky,

but that very pigeon unborn by Time,

released from its deflated womb like helium.

It is an undoing that leaves no trace behind

but itchy eyes and a sneeze blooming in the nose of a stranger –

so quietly do we come undone,

like laces untied by nobody.

LIMERENCE IS A GREENHOUSE

Enchanting how the sunlight gleams

across four glass walls

and its glass lid,

glistens over leaves lush and petals pretty,

and injects with gold every drop of mist.

But my lungs are heavy humid

in this greenhouse we call limerence,

synthetic sticky, strangled,

and I’m wearing polyester.

ANGELS

Did your wings unfurl like a sailor’s sails,

or like barbs did feathers bud from your skin?

Were they papier mâché that never dried overnight,

or like cash in jean pockets, were they forgotten?

Were your wings preserved in a weatherproof tub in a weatherproof wardrobe

in a weatherproof childhood far away?

Did you assign them to someone

or something along the way?

Did you, where God Himself set your place,

instead say grace and bow your head in worship?

My phone rings, and I realise the music stopped who knows when. I stare at the mute words on the page, feel the silence split open like a log, and when the ringing stops, it takes me three reads before the words reclaim their voice.

IS YOUR REFRIGERATOR RUNNING?

A dozen souvenirs forever frozen

at the very back of a forgotten fridge

at the very back of the suburbs—no,

the countryside—of my subconscious.

Empty the tray, sour cube by cube,

where they may melt amongst fallen lemons.

Or heck, unplug the old thing,

dump it beneath a wrinkled olive tree,

its cable in the dirt like a cut umbilical cord.

USED TO

We used to sit beneath trees more often, read more often,

scrape our elbows and knees more often.

We lived more often

and dreamt more often

and thought more often

than thoughtless, dreamless, lifeless Today

who sinks its teeth and nails into nothing,

scrapes its moisturised skin not against asphalt

but an unlived-in king size bed for one.

MATTE RED

You pluck me, a tulip,

then demand I be a rose.

So, we paint my cellophane petals red

while beside us blooms a rosebush as good as any.

Instead, you claim to love me

though I remark your squinted eyes,

and my petals, they droop

weighed down by their disguise.

DRESS

I’m a woman with a dress and no spine,

no spine but a dress,

and though my dress, it isn’t mine—inherited—

it is a dress,

and where my spineless back reclines

(on embroidered cushions plumped by me!)

I find dusted and vacuumed respite

from the sand that never filled my shoes,

from the wind that never tangled my hair,

from the rain that never wet this ironed dress –

why, just take a look at it!

The magazine claps shut, blurb upright, and I stand in the window’s embrace, eager to describe. On the wind flutter in the cheers of football fans downstairs, and in the distance float two green hot air balloons like what? like Brussels sprouts. Poetry polishes the senses, and my dusty mind, like an old, outdated globe, is updated.

There are words I can turn into verbs, and verbs I might make nouns. Shaping language is like Chinese sugar blowing, mould it while it’s still soft and stretchy!

And so, I make a second cup of coffee while my senses are still fresh, into which I drop three red lashes of saffron, and I make a wish because why not? Why not reinterpret everything? Why not play make-believe? Why not reduce myself to a child (though ‘promote’ might be the more apt word) and why not adopt their wonder, the very wonder sanded down at home, at school, at work?

And as a writer stuck in a rut of not writing, why not pummel language until it swells into something unrecognisable? to be met and known and recognised all over again?

So, I set pen to paper. How did that chlorine smell, after all, and how did those almonds taste? And those oranges, were they anything other than sweet?